Developers of NBIC (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno) technologies face a multitude of obstacles, not the least of which is navigating the public ethics of their applied research. Biotechnologies have received widespread media attention and spawned heated interest in their perceived social implications. Now, in view of the rapidly expanding purview of neuroscience and the growing array of technologic developments capable of affecting or monitoring cognition, the emerging field of neuroethics calls for a consideration of the social and ethical implication...

Sabine Heuser. Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the Postmodern and Science Fiction. New York: Rodopi, 2003. xlv + 257 pp. $60 pbk.
Sabine Heuser’s Virtual Geographies is an ambitious attempt to relate the 1980s-and-continuing phenomenon of cyberpunk to the more general field of science fiction, and to postmodernist literature, art, and architecture. It focuses on the work of William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, and Neal Stephenson, three of the best-known and most impressive authors to have attracted the “cyb...

Invisibility
by Mike Treder
No, this entry is not about nanotechnology’s ability to turn a person invisible, although it has been reported that researchers are working on that.

I’m more interested today in thinking and writing about hidden or invisible destruction, as opposed to visible destruction. For example, take the fear of nuclear war, which is understandably (and properly!) ...

This week’s Economist looks at the growing level of innovation in the health-related biotechnology industries of developing nations. No longer simply copying existing drugs and treatments, nations such as China, India, Cuba and Brazil have begun to make substantial contributions to global bioscience. Biotechnology is an ideal leapfrog pathway, as it doesn’t require a substantial existing industrial base, only well-educated scient...